Automated Trucks count and reports

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Dec 25, 2014
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Automated vehicles/trucks count and reports

We need to build a setup using Blue Iris with a Full HD IP Camera to count how many trucks passes in a single day, on the single track entrance of a company.

Also, the company demands to get a printed daily report of how much trucks passed. Even better with license plates of them, if this could be achieved.

Is this possible with Blue Iris? It demands other applications? Please share you ideas and experiences on this, it would be highly appreciated and certainly would help others too.

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This sounds like a computer vision question, as it relates to object recognition.

My company does something like this, we specialize in human detection for CCTV systems (for burglary), but I think we could probably help out here. We do have a way of identifying cars, trucks, etc. but the details will depend on the setup (# of cameras, angle, etc).

We do not use Blue Iris for the solution though. We are a cloud service, meaning clients provide their connection parameters and we analyze the feeds in realtime. Is realtime analysis part of you customers requirements? or just the daily report?
 
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Both. On Blue Iris we achieve the detection of a truck by object size, it doesn't need to identify what is the object using complex methods.

The problem relies on license plate detection and counting/listing of day's movements...
 
...and as it is a remote site, we almost don't have a proper internet connection there to provide streams in full HD.
 
You could use 2 cams, one to detect the truck with your current BI solution, and another to snap a front or back picture to capture the plates.

If your client is OK with getting the plates at the end-of-day report only, then you could just process them later. Even a raspberry Pi on site should be able to do the OCR required to get the plates, also you could just submit the images por someone to transcribe, or even just append the front/back picture to your report.
 
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there are commercial systems that do that kind of thing. the cheap way is probably to go low tech with something like a raspberry pi with some sort of trigger like an ir beam that the trucks break rather than cameras. reading license plates and pulling the characters off the plate is a hard/pricey thing to do. the pi could trigger BI so at least you have an alert when a truck passes, but if there are lots of trucks, that would be annoying and you could rely on the time stamp

if you don't care about the plates and want easy, just do something like a metrocount unit with a loop put into the asphalt/concrete a the entrance. the metrocount does all sorts of reporting but you have to go out and download from the unit. additionally you could run the hd video for license plates and call it up only when you need.

if you only need a snapshot, just pay a kid to sit out there for a week with a clipboard.
 
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Use a Physical vehicle sensor thats ran over, hooked to a camera w/alarm input configured to record when triggered.. an external script could be configured to monitor that vehicle sensor and send an API command to camera to update OSD with number of triggers that day.. you'll have a recording and you can always check the feed to see the current count.

If camera is positioned correctly it'll capture the plate is avilable for manual reading or further processing through OpenALPRD.

I dont know if BluIris can monitor alarm IO events on-cam and trigger off that; but Dahua NVR can w/Dahua cameras.
 
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Thanks, I'll consider every scenario commented here.

If what we need can't be achieved with Blue Iris and related tools, what other specific software could be used?
 
I have this NodeJS library for Dahua systems: https://github.com/nayrnet/node-dahua-api

Ive been meaning to expand it with functions to update the custom text displays on the cameras.. If you have any programming/scripting abilities at all you can use that to capture when the camera's alarm input is triggered and do whatever you want, like update a webpage that displays a report/historical data, perhaps with a jpeg from a camera capture.
 
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Still looking for a simple vehicle counting solution, related (or not) with Blue Iris... Many of the mentioned approachs are complex, demand sensors, etc.

At a first time we would not need license plates identification.
 
this is simple, but your going to pay for it: http://www.picocounter.com/

and its not realtime, you have to manually download the data..
 
nayr said:
this is simple, but your going to pay for it: http://www.picocounter.com/

and its not realtime, you have to manually download the data..
Click to expand...

haha, i like the selling point 'no phd required'. they do tend to over complicate counters and they usually rely on old technology. i remember using a serial port with a kermit terminal to download a counter less than 10 years ago, well after everything tech wise had gone usb (with exception to controls/scada).
 
If you can manage to send something like 5fps over your internet connection (does not need to be HD if you don't need the plate) then I might be able to help.

I do video analytics as a service. Send me a PM.
 
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Re: Automated vehicles/trucks count and reports

Must be processed locally as it is a remote place and internet access there is like a mirage...
 
If you have a machine running BI locally, that machine should be more than enough to run the required analysis.

Do you have any programming experience? Or interest to learn? It is a pretty simple OpenCV project, but it would have a learning curve, and it might not be worth it for you.
 
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nats said:
If you have a machine running BI locally, that machine should be more than enough to run the required analysis.

Do you have any programming experience? Or interest to learn? It is a pretty simple OpenCV project, but it would have a learning curve, and it might not be worth it for you.
Click to expand...
I remember learning some programming more than 15 years ago. Today I'm afraid that I don't have the guts or the time or both
 
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There are a few threads here on ALPR (automatic license plate recognition), this one is the longest and worth reading through:
https://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthread.php/516-Dedicated-License-Plate-Cam-project

How wide is the entrance... not sure what single track means...?

To get ALPR working the best you may want a buried vehicle probe or a photoelectric beam wired into yor camera.

What are your hours of operation?

Your ALPR database should be all you really need. But there could be some duplicate entries beyond catching vehicles coming and going.

Another line of thought:
weigh stations on the highway all seem to have RFID readers. I don't know what types of tags/transponders are in some/most trucks, but if you got hardware that could read them that would work well too.
 
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By single track (sorry, english is not my main language) I mean when there is space on the entrance only for one vehicle at a time. What's the correct way of saying it?

Hours of operation are during daytime.

I think that with ALPR working we could avoid duplicate entries. Am I right?

They allow there 20 trucks/day, and to keep track of it would be better to have this automated.
 
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